Racism is a necessary Republican strategy for the GOP to hang on to power, it is believed by Sean Trende, a GOP strategist and pollster, and as Tomasky further points out, GOP racism is only going to get uglier.

Sean Trende, the conservative movement’s heavily asterisked answer to Nate Silver (that is to say, Silver got everything right, and Trende got everything wrong), came out with an analysis this week, headlined “Does GOP Have to Pass Immigration Reform?,” showing that by golly no, it doesn’t. You can jump over there yourself and study all his charts and graphs, but the long and short of it is something like this. Black turnout and Democratic support have both been unusually high in the last two elections, which is true; Democrats have been steadily losing white voters, which is also true; if you move black turnout back down to 2004-ish levels and bump up GOP margins among whites (by what strikes me as a wildly optimistic amount), you reach White Valhalla. Somehow or another, under Trende’s 'racial polarization scenario,' it’ll be 2044 before the Democrats again capture 270 electoral votes. Thus is the heat of Schlafly’s rhetoric cooled [GOP does not need Latino votes, it just needs to build up the white vote] and given fresh substance via the dispassionate tools of statistics.

And here’s the worst part of this story. If the House Republicans kill immigration reform, and Republican parties across the South double down to keep blacks from voting, then they really will need to jack up the white vote—and especially the old white vote—in a huge way to be competitive in 2016 and beyond. Well, they’re not going to do that by mailing out Lawrence Welk CDs. They’re going to run heavily divisive and racialized campaigns, worse than we’ve ever seen out of Nixon or anyone. Their only hope of victory will be to make a prophet of (Sean Trende) who advocates a more racially polarized national race for the GOP—that is, reduce the Democrats’ share of the white vote to something in the mid - to - low-30 percent range. That probably can’t happen, but there’s only one way it might. Run the most racially inflamed campaign imaginable.

Republicans running the most racially inflamed campaign imaginable? I can imagine.

I can also imagine violence appealing to the most unhinged, racist elements of American society. [See above right.]

And violence is a predictable consequence of racially inflamed campaigns.

Even John McCain admirably put the breaks on racist appeals when his staff began to believe things were getting out of control in 2008.

The Republican campaign will be centered in the South and Appalachia, and becoming loosed on white people the nation-over reaching rural Wisconsin, anywhere white people live.

Hate will beget violence and bombings. It's an old story.

If the Republicans run the most racially inflamed campaign imaginable, there will be blood.

I ask again why then would Sean Trende consider such a despicable course of action? What does he believe the consequences would be?

The words of Ralph Mcgill will once again prove prophetic 56 years after the 1957 bombing of a synagogue by "rabid, mad-dog minds" called to action once again, deranged in 1957 by the desegregation decision:

For too many years now we have seen the Confederate flag and the emotions of that great war become the property of men not fit to tie the shoes of those who fought it. Some of these have been merely childish and immature. Others have perverted and commercialized the flag by making the Stars and Bars, and the Confederacy itself, a symbol of hate and bombings.

For a long time now it has been needful for all Americans to stand up and be counted on the side of law and the due process of law - even when to do so goes against personal beliefs and emotions. It is late. But there is yet time.

Due process of law, equal protection. Republicans are out to destroy these foundations of America.

One thing Trende underestimates is that a racial polarization campaign will run into a determined group of allies who will work against racism—a blowback that only those without a sense of history could overlook.

The young, the tens of millions of Americans dedicated to equality, blacks and the browns are going to mobilize into a coalition like Trende has never seen.

Trende does offer over a passing notice to "white" Americans dedicated to equality: "Now, there is a theoretical maximum for Republicans among whites; sooner or later you run into Madison, Wis., and Ann Arbor, Mich." (p.3)

Yes, you do.

There are many living in highly educated cities who find Trende's idea of a racialized campaign to be repulsive. Americans will stand up and be counted.

Let's hope for more work in 2014-16 like that of Sen. John McCain's who pointedly countered racist views by audience members towards Sen. Obama in October 2008. See video below.

Bernie Sanders in 2020

Search Mal Contends

Trump's dog whistles to racists including white municipal police continue. From August 2016 in West Bend, Wisconsin, as reported by Yamiche Alcindor in the New York Times:

Jack Beck, 65, a retired bricklayer who lives in West Bend, said he planned to vote for Mr. Trump.

"Every night in Milwaukee, there is someone being shot, and they make nothing of that until a cop is involved, and then all of a sudden it’s always blamed on the cop," said Mr. Beck, who added that he hoped West Bend’s black population would not increase. He tied much of the unrest in Milwaukee to his belief that black residents do not want to work hard and instead want to use police killings to get handouts from the government.
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"You do not preach and encourage hatred for the Negro and hope to restrict it to that field. It is an old, old story. It is one repeated over and over again in history. When the wolves of hate are loosed on one people, then no one is safe."— Ralph McGillAtlanta Constitution, Oct. 13, 1958A Church, A School

Federal Voting Rights Court Cases

- Gill v. Whitford, (District Court (Case 3:15-cv-00421)) (2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 155022 (W.D. Wis., Nov. 17, 2015)), is a federal case challenging the constitutionality of Wisconsin's Republican-drawn legislative-redistricting scheme- One Wisconsin Institute v. Thomsen(U.S. District Court of the Western District of Wisconsin (Case 15-cv-324)) - Frank v. Walker- Since 2011 Wisconsin Republicans have made some 34 changes to Wisconsin election law to keep Republicans in political power (Katelyn Ferral, The Capital Times)

Support The Krow - Human rights warrior, Katie Krow Kloth

Scariest 14 Words in Politics

I'm from the Republican Party and I'm here to save Social Security and Medicare.

Social Security and Medicare Targeted by Paul Ryan and his Ayn Rand-worshipping Colleagues

"I left as an act of rational self-interest. Having gutted private-sector pensions and health benefits as a result of their embrace of outsourcing, union busting and 'shareholder value' the GOP now thinks it is only fair that public-sector workers give up their pensions and benefits, too. Hence the intensification of the GOP's decades-long campaign of scorn against government workers. Under the circumstances, it is simply safer to be a current retiree rather than a prospective one. If you think Paul Ryan and his Ayn Rand-worshipping colleagues aren't after your Social Security and Medicare, I am here to disabuse you of your naiveté. They will move heaven and earth to force through tax cuts that will so starve the government of revenue that they will be 'forced' to make 'hard choices' - and that doesn't mean repealing those very same tax cuts, it means cutting the benefits for which you worked."

Spotting Political Prosecutions

Alex Kozinski on liberty

"The right to do what the law does not prohibit, without fear of harassment or punishment, is one of the hallmarks of a free society." — Judge Alex Kozinski, Chief Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (Foreword in Sidney Powell's Licensed to Lie: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice (Brown Books Publishing Group, 2014))

Wisconsin Misconduct in Public Office

SCR 946.12(3). Misconduct in public office. Any public officer or public employee who does any of the following is guilty of a Class I felony. See link above.

Class-action, civil rights suit against Milwaukee

"For almost a decade, the Milwaukee Police Department has pursued an aggressive and unconstitutional policing strategy promoting large numbers of stops and frisks citywide. Between 2007 and 2015, the department almost tripled their traffic and pedestrian stops, from around 66,000 to around 196,000, following the launch of the program in 2008."

Milwaukee residents have long protested that police officers are conducting stops and frisks of innocent people, and particularly treating people of color as suspects for no good reason, stopping innocent men, women, and children as they try to go about their daily lives. The department conducts far more stops and frisks in the parts of Milwaukee that are predominantly Black or Latino than in other areas."- From the ACLU

Political-legal news

Sea of individual rights

"When conservatives like [Robert] Bork treat rights as islands surrounded by a sea of government powers, they precisely reverse the view of the Founders as enshrined in the Constitution, wherein government powers are limited and specified and rendered as islands surrounded by a sea of individual rights."- Stephen Macedo. The New Right v. the Constitution (Washington: Cato Institute, 1987)

On being police

Scott Walker—Frontman for Rightwingers

"The simplest way I can tell you is we had total and complete unity between the state party, quite frankly, Americans for Prosperity, the Tea Party groups, the Grandsons of Liberty. The [Glenn Beck-instigated] 9/12ers were involved. It was a total and complete agreement that nobody cared who got the credit, that everyone was going to run down the tracks together..." ...

The Strike — The Improbable Story of an Iconic 1886 Painting of Labor Protest

James M. Dennis, professor emeritus of art history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison

President Theodore Roosevelt on Veterans

Republicans are after veterans' benefits: "A man who is good enough to shed his blood for his country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards. More than that no man is entitled, and less than that no man shall have." - President Theodore Roosevelt. Speech to veterans, Springfield, IL, July 4, 1903

On the Fourth Amendment, back in 1972

"The price of lawful public dissent must not be a dread of subjection to an unchecked surveillance power. Nor must the fear of unauthorized official eavesdropping deter vigorous citizen dissent and discussion of Government action in private conversation."
- Justice Lewis Franklin Powell, Jr., writing for unanimous court in: United States v. United States District Court, 407 U.S. 297 (1972)

Fourth Amendment

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

National Weather Sites

Radar Map

Bertrand Russell

"Those whose lives are fruitful to themselves, totheir friends, or to the world are inspired by hope and sustained by joy: they see in imagination the things that might be and the way in which they are to be brought into existence. In their private relations they are not pre-occupied with anxiety lest they should lose such affection and respect as they receive: they are engaged in giving affection and respect freely, and the reward comes ofitself without their seeking. In their work they are not haunted by jealousy of competitors, but concerned with the actual matter that has to be done. In politics, they do not spend time and passion defending unjust privileges of their class or nation, but they aim at making the world as a whole happier, less cruel, less full of conflict between rival greeds, and more full of human beings whose growth has not been dwarfed and stunted by oppression."

U.S. Supreme Court Decision - Michigan Dept of State Police v. Sitz

Michael Leon

Michael Leon is a writer living in Madison, Wisconsin. His reporting has been recognized by the Wisconsin Newspaper Association. Leon's writing has appeared nationally in The Progressive, The Advocate, In These Times, CounterPunch and The Champion—the journal of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and locally in the Isthmus, the Capital Times and the Fitchburg Star. Leon works as a writer, editor, veterans' advocate, and public relations consultant.